


Something All Their Own

by Angelina_Aintithenniel



Series: The Cottage at the End of the Lane [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hastur is definitely stalking Crowley, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), equal opportunity whump, none of them are Crowley's fault, there are several fires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-08-23 04:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20236726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelina_Aintithenniel/pseuds/Angelina_Aintithenniel
Summary: In which Hell comes for Crowley, Aziraphale is quite done with their home being attacked, and fire threatens to take everything from them. Again.OrCrowley was right to suspect his nightmares. Now all he can hope is that they get through this in one piece.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the third and final installment of The Cottage at the End of the Lane. As always, this can be read as a standalone or paired the other two parts of this series. Brief reminder: the author only spent a few terms in England and has only been to London a grand total of three times so please excuse any errors or comment to let me know how I can fix it. Enjoy the fluff, angst, and whump!

Little Delving was the type of village that tourist guides wrote poetry about. [1] It sat atop the chalk cliffs of Southern England, overlooking the sea. Wildflowers bloomed there in the spring, tourists clogged the beaches in the summer, deep hues of orange and red splashed across the Downs in the autumn, and Christmas came in the winter. While it wasn’t quite the spectacle of Oxford Street during the holidays, the high street of Little Delving was still a sight to behold. Decked out with lights, traditional markets, and a grand tree in the square, the entire village was hailed as a must-see destination for holiday goers everywhere. But for a certain demon stuck in the middle of the Christmas crowds, it was currently Hell on Earth. 

Most demons didn’t mix well with religious holidays and Crowley was no exception. For centuries he had tried to circumvent the whole affair, getting it banned in some places and driving the rampant greed of consumerism in others. But no amount of corruption had ever managed to remove the veneer of Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All Men that held the whole spectacle together. In fact, the holiday routinely left him nauseous for the better part of the fortnight between the Solstice and the New Year. 

He really should have stayed in bed, but Crowley wanted to finish up his Christmas present for Aziraphale before the holiday in question knocked him on his arse. Which is how he found himself jostling through the throngs of people as they bustled along the lighted street, taking care of last minute shopping and gawking at the decorations. A bag full of home improvement supplies was balanced in one arm and a sack full of groceries in the other. He had everything planned out perfectly: all that was left to do was finish hanging the Victorian tapestries, attach the trim to the bookcases he’d had custom built for the space, [2] and move in the last of the books Aziraphale kept squirreled away all over the house. The small home library would never compare to his Soho shop or any of the establishments that the angel had frequented over the course of history, but it would at least give him a dedicated space to store his books in their home. And then Crowley would make the one pasta dish that he knew and try not to say stupidly sentimental things over wine; he was still a demon after all. 

Skirting some carolers, Crowley managed to kick over a music stand without overbalancing his load and continued up the street. In his wake, all the sheet music clutched in the hands of the singers spontaneously combusted to a chorus of frightened yells, dragging ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ to an untimely halt. The demon would be glad when the whole blasted holiday was over and he could go back to sullenly ignoring his neighbors as they carefully ignored him. No more of this Christmas cheer. Crowley left the high street slightly more evil than he had found it. 

Aziraphale was still in London for the week, wanting to finish up the last of the Christmas rush before coming back for an extended holiday, so the cottage was empty when Crowley returned. All the better to finish his tasks. He’d managed to convince Aziraphale that he was going to turn the spare room into a guest room should they ever have guests that they actually wanted to entertain. [3] As such, the angel hadn’t much bothered him when he came home with an assortment of building materials and paint cans several days later. But now that he was out of the cottage for a while, Crowley could make considerable headway. The demon ducked into the almost-finished library and immediately set to work; there wasn’t time to waste. 

By some miracle and more than a little creative use of time, he finished the library, set dinner to cook, and was moving the last of Aziraphale’s first edition poetry tomes into the new space when the front door creaked open. 

“Dear boy?” the angel called out from the empty sitting room. “Where are you?”

“Up here!” Crowley hollered back, quickly setting the books down haphazardly on a shelf. He miracled himself out of his paint splattered clothes as an afterthought. 

Azirphale’s heavy footsteps up the stairs and down the hall announced his presence before he appeared around the doorframe with a “hel- oh, what’s this?!”

“It’s for you,” the demon explained as he edged out of the way to give his husband a better view of what used to be their spare room. 

“For me?”

“Do you like it” Crowley asked, trying not to let any of the uncertainty he was feeling into his voice. 

Aziraphale stood speechless in the center of the doorway, breathing come in small puffs of air and looking unsure about what he was seeing. His eyes roamed over the room, trying to take in everything from the dark wood bookcases to the thoroughly un-Crowley art on the walls before settling on the few books of his that had already made a home amongst the cozy shelves. 

“Well?” Crowley asked again, voice pitched high with anxiety. 

“It’s lovely,” the angel smiled widely at him, his face scrunched with laughter lines all the way up to his overly-expressive eyes. “It’s exactly what I needed.”

Aziraphale disappeared into the room, squeezing between the bookshelves with practiced ease. His hands trailed along the edges of smooth wood with an almost reverence and Crowley could tell that he was already planning how to organize his collection. It was amazing to see the angel worship something with an almost palpable sense of admiration and for a brief moment, the demon felt like he was intruding on an intimate supplication.

The angel’s voice called out from the back of the room, interrupting Crowley’s thoughts, “wherever did you get these tapestries? They’re remarkably well-made.” 

“I picked them up from Sotheby’s sometime in the 60s,” Crowley answered, failing to clarify which century he was referring to. The angel never needed to know that he had purchased them as a gift for him shortly after the Holy Water fiasco. 

Aziraphale reappeared around one of the rows, hurrying forward to hook an arm around one of Crowley’s. “They must have cost you a small fortune. I suspect these are works from the Gobelins Manufactory.” 

“You would know best on that one,” the demon lied, well aware of where the tapestries had originally been produced and exactly what he had done to the manufactory not even ten years after he had purchased them. [4] He steered them out of the library and back down the stairs. “Now, I know you’re dying to set everything up, but I think I managed to get the banoffee pie right this time.”

The angel didn’t need to be tempted twice and followed eagerly to the kitchen. 

* * *

Of course, the companionable atmosphere was too good to last and all too soon Crowley could feel the tell-tale nausea of the Christmas season clench his stomach in a vice. It was time. 

Nearly every Christmas that he could get away with it, Crowley passed the unpleasant holiday dead to the world. Which is why he was currently wrapped in every single blanket he and Aziraphale collectively owned, moaning bitterly as his husband tried to straighten out the mess of bedding. 

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale tutted. “You sound like a miser.”

“That’s because I am one,” Crowley agreed, twisting further into the hold of the sheets. 

Giving up on the job, the angel sat down beside the demon, tucking the blankets tight enough to nearly swaddle him. “In that case, I shan’t save you any Christmas pudding.” 

Crowley knew Azirphale’s threat was an empty one and so added a lazy “Bah humbug” for good measure. The angel ignored him. 

A gentle haze of world-weariness washed over the demon as he sunk into the warmth of the bed. The nausea in the pit of his stomach still stabbed at him, but wasn’t enough to ward off the creeping sleep. It had been too long since he was able to take an extended nap. This would be good for him. And, hopefully, when he next woke this twice-blessed holiday would be over and done with for another year. 

“Crowley, dear? Are you still with me?” Aziraphale asked, a hand reaching up to tuck a stray curl behind the demon’s ear. 

A murmured groan was the only response Crowley was capable of giving, already drifting away underneath the sea of blankets. The weight of his husband disappearing from the side of the mattress was the last thing the demon’s mind managed to process. He didn’t hear Aziraphale leave the room several minutes later or smell the tea he set by his side a few minutes after that. The tea steamed on for nearly two weeks, filling the room with the fragrance of mulling spices. 

* * *

Fire burned behind his eyes. Crowley stirred in his cocoon of blankets, feeling the sheets trap him in place. No matter how much he wriggled, bucked, or desperately snapped his fingers, the bedding would not let him go. It was as if he was covered in iron chains, heavy and unyielding. 

Pained screams echoed through the cottage, familiar screams. The demon could never forget their sound. 

“No!” he moaned, twisting further in his prison. “Aziraphale!”

He opened his eyes, blinking up at the flames that licked the ceiling. The screams cut out with a terrifying finality. 

Hands tried to hold him down as he struggled wildly, cries choked by his effort. “Stay still, you silly snake!” a familiar voice reproached. 

Crowley blinked up at the white ceiling, untouched by fire or smoke. One of the hands managed to slip over his own, pinning it beneath the bedding. The demon’s struggles waned as confusion replaced his terror. 

“Crowley?!” that was Aziraphale’s voice, whole and unhurt. 

“Angel?” Crowley slurred, falling limp in the bed. 

A hum answered him as the mess of bedding was untangled from his limbs. He stretched arms and legs, reveling in the ability to move freely. Crowley debated sitting up or at least talking to his husband, but the smell of Christmas still clogged his nostrils and twisted his stomach into knots. Sleep took him before he could fully process a decision. 

* * *

It was nearing mid-morning when Crowley next woke, judging by the sunlight that streamed through the windows and directly into his uncovered eyes. Head still clouded with sleep, it took him several minutes to untangle the mass of bedding. Steaming tea on the bedside table immediately drew his attention and the demon gulped it down gratefully. All he needed was a cup of tea to chase away the possibly literal demons of his sleep. 

Crowley managed to crawl out of bed without incident, relishing in the feel of the cool floorboards beneath his feet. The scent of pine needles and cinnamon filled his nostrils as he tripped down the stairs, bare toes nearly catching on the runner. Crowley wondered if Aziraphale had picked out another of those scented candles he had recently been fascinated with until the demon reached the bottom of the stairs and saw, of all things, a Christmas tree standing in the corner, decorated with purple and gold baubles. 

And then he sneezed. 

“Angel!” the demon hollered, trying to suppress the sniffles before they could overtake his voice. 

Aziraphale bustled out of the kitchen, stopping short when he saw Crowley standing in the middle of the sitting room. His eyes flicked back and forth between the still sleepy figure of his husband and the tree in the corner. “Oh, dear.” 

“Why d-” another sneeze interrupted the demon. A pack of kleenexes appeared in his hand, but he still glared at the angel, clearly not mollified by his husband’s actions. “Would you like to tell me why there is a dead tree dropping pine needles and sap all over my floor? You do remember that I’m allergic to Christmas, yes?”

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale rushed to explain. “My dear, you must realize I never- I just- ooh, I didn’t expect you to wake so soon.” 

One eyebrow quirked impressively on Crowley’s forehead, displaying his disapproval. “Obviously.”

“If you just give me some time, I’ll get this whole mess cleared out.”

“No,” the demon snapped. “This goes away now. I can’t believe you brought Christmas into my house!” 

Without another word, Crowley stalked over to the tree, grabbed the nearest open container, [5] and began ripping the assorted baubles off of the Christmas tree. The terrified fir shrank away from the demon, trying to save it’s needles from being torn off by the fistful.

“That’s egyptian glass!” Aziraphale bellowed, diving across the room as Crowley reached to pull down more baubles. He intercepted the handful of carefully crafted glass before the demon could slam them into the box. Both angel and demon stood glaring at each other, breathing hard, as Aziraphale gently wrestled the box from his husband’s hands. “You’ve made your point dear. Please go eat something and I will see to this.”

Crowley grumbled and turned to continue tearing the tree apart bough-from-bough. He immediately stepped on a handmade ornament, swearing as it punctured the arch of his foot. The demon sank to the ground without his usual grace, yanked out the offending item, and banished the blood with a thought. A broken star lay in his hands, made of painted ceramic and clearly bearing the name Wensleydale on the backside. Crowley stared at it in bemusement for several minutes before Aziraphale took the star from his hands and mended it with a miracle.

“Yes,” the angel answered his unvoiced question. “Young Adam and his friends sent us a Christmas gift last week while you were sleeping.”

All the fight left Crowley with that small realization. Another gift, for him, from someone other than Aziraphale. The demon, not one to acknowledge his outbursts,[6] took the subject change gratefully. “Anymore of these ‘gift’ things and I’m going to start losing my demonic touch.”

“And where would England be if that happened?” Aziraphale smiled at him. “Breakfast is in the kitchen. Go eat, love, and maybe you’ll feel better.”

Neither mentioned the incident again and by the time Crowley had finished his food, the rest of Christmas had been neatly packed away. Not even a stray fir needle remained to tickle his senses. 

* * *

Outside of the cottage at the end of the lane, nothing stirred. The chalk cliffs were unusually still, feeling as if nature was holding its figurative breath for what came next. And this is because it was. 

A storm brewed in the distance, atmospheric lightning crashing against the horizon, but it didn’t dare draw any closer to Little Delving or the cottage that lay there. All down the lane, families huddled into their own cottages, muttering about unseasonably bad weather and the sudden cold. No one noticed the frog that sat in the middle of the street. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1This was because the actual poets whose works survived to posterity had gone north and written about such trite things as flowers, women, and death. So most travel guides were forced to make due with the £20 a piece poems that perennially starving students, little old ladies, and down-on-their-luck locals turned in. As a result, most of the poetry concerning the region was considered, as a general rule, saccharine rubbish and not to be trusted. [return to text]  
2After all, manual labor really wasn’t his style. [return to text]  
3He explicitly didn’t mention the type of guests that they _ didn’t _ want to entertain. [return to text]  
4Note for American readers and those unfamiliar with history: The Gobelins Manufactory in Paris supplied the courts of French Monarchs with their art for nearly 200 years. Unfortunately, its history has been a rocky one, having fallen afoul of both financial issues and the French Revolution. It was revived during the Bourbon Restoration only to be partially burned down during the Paris Commune of 1871. Crowley, never being overly fond of the French and amused by the idea of socialism, had popped over to see the spectacle and quickly regretted it. To this day he swore to anyone - except Hell - that the fire wasn’t his fault. [return to text]  
5Helpfully labeled _ Aziraphale’s baubles, fragile - that means don’t touch it Crowley _ in neat copperplate script. [return to text]  
6“Call them what they are: tantrums, dear,” Aziraphale would say whenever he did bring it up. [return to text]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. There was a death in the family and I’ve been scrambling to get last minute travel plans together for it all. So here’s a longer and meandering chapter to make up for the wait.

This is Crowley: tall, slender, wearing a stark dressing gown that spoke of modern wealth, with tousled ringlets dancing around his shoulders in the wind. He was standing on the cliffs overlooking the sea, reveling in the cold night air as the dressing gown billowed out behind him. Had anyone been awake to see him framed against the horizon beneath the moonlight, they might have thought him an angel. They would have been entirely wrong, of course. No, the man was a demon - for all that was worth anymore. And he’d like everyone to remember that.

“This is terribly gothic, even for you my dear,” a voice interrupted the man’s silence. 

Another figure climbed the hill behind him, an umbrella tucked beneath his arm. “It’s going to rain soon, please come back inside,” the figure said. 

Crowley continued to stare out into the distance. For a long while, he remained silent before finally speaking, “the nightmares have gone, angel.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” the angel asked. There was very little about him that struck the observer as ethereal, unlike his demonic counterpart. If one had to hazard a guess, they might have suggested that the dumpy man worked in a museum or something equally as ancient and boring. They never would have believed the truth, but then again, people rarely do. Despite first impressions, the fact of the matter remained that Aziraphale was every part an angel; even if he did look like a 1953 advert for men’s nightwear.[1]

“No,” Crowley groaned. “It’s not right. Something’s not right. It feels like the calm before the storm.” 

The angel didn’t immediately respond, but reached out to rest a hand over the demon’s clenched one. Together, they listened to the night sounds around them: crickets, a lone bird, and the rustle of tall grass in the sea breeze playing a gentle symphony for any awake to hear it.[2] A cold rain began to drizzle down, almost like the fine spray of the waves far below. 

“I’m sorry, dear boy, but staying out here isn’t going to do anything to help the matter,” Aziraphale murmured gently. 

The demon turned his face up to the sky, staring without blinking as the rain splashed onto his brow and clung to his hair. He seemed to think for a moment, teetering on the edge of saying something before a shudder shook his frame and he stepped back from the chalky edge of the cliff. Something in the air - besides the rapidly building humidity - changed as whatever had held Crowley enthralled dissipated into the air. Next to him, Aziraphale smiled warmly, opening the umbrella and pulling his husband beneath it. They slowly picked their way back down the footpath, trying not to slip on the rain slicked ground. 

“What, no wings today?” Crowley huffed when they were halfway down. 

“But it’s such a nice robe and it would be a shame to ruin it,” Aziraphale’s free hand clenched in the plush fabric of his dressing gown. True, he could miracle it back into shape within a heartbeat, but he would always remember the gaping holes that manifesting his wings caused. 

“Not even for me?” 

The angel paused to consider this for a moment before realizing that Crowley was teasing. “Oh, you foul tempter!”

Crowley shrugged, “worth a try.”

The gentle drizzle turned into a proper rain, before beating into a downpour. Together, angel and demon ran pell-mell across the Downs and into the shelter of their cottage. 

* * *

The New Year came and went, midwinter taking hold of the Downs in it’s chilly grip. Frost coated the ground in a dust of white, firming the chalk into a hard pack. It was exactly the time of year that Aziraphale loved and Crowley hated. 

Which is why the sleeping back garden was shocked to be roused by the demanding hands of its tormentor - er, caretaker. The demon swore at the cold that clung to his form as he worked in the still morning. Deep bags nearly swallowed elliptical eyes and his hands shook with what might have been hysteria but was most likely exhaustion. He hadn’t slept in days. 

In a fit of alcohol induced insomnia at the start of the week, Crowley had consulted the few books of arcane lore which he still owned for insights on his dreams and current lack thereof. Instead of the solution that he had gone looking for, all Crowley found was a handy number of protection sigils and some promising notes scrawled in the margins. The human who’d written the book obviously hadn’t understood what he was working with, but Crowley knew enough about demonic interventions to fill in the blanks. And this was when the idea that his sober self would probably have told him was foolish took hold of his mind and didn’t let go. 

He’d spent days carefully carving, painting, hiding, and securing everything he could think of with many and various sigils, wards, and the few spells a demon could configure. Now all he had left was this last sigil and he was done. The demon tittered at his own brilliance as he twisted the limbs of his best climbing roses into an intricate pattern and tied it all down. Once the flowers started blooming, the whole getup would be practically invisible, just inviting any of the poor sods who decided to take them on into the trap. 

Crowley would be damned[3] if he let anyone get the better of him on his own turf again.

* * *

Heedless of the driving wind and numbing cold, an angel and a demon strolled hand-in-hand along the cliffs overlooking the beach. A bench that might possibly have been white once upon a time but had long since weathered into a dingy grey invited them in. With a grateful sigh, both men sank down, balancing a picnic basket between them. 

“I can’t believe you wanted to go for a picnic in the middle of winter,” Crowley muttered mutinously, shivering in the wind. The demon had never been overly fond of the cold, possibly owing to his cold blooded nature or to the fact that his fashion sense was generally allergic to anything warmer than a jacket. And today was just as cold as the last month in East Sussex had been. The air around the angel and the demon suddenly grew warmer and warmer until it reached that ideal temperature that made Crowley want to curl up for a week and sleep. 

“I thought we were cutting back on frivolous miracles?” the demon snarked, one eyebrow raised at his hypocrite of a husband. 

“Yes, well,” the pink that dusted Aziraphale’s cheeks had nothing to do with the cold. “Food?” 

Crowley accepted the change of subject grudgingly. “Could you hand me the tea sandwiches?” he asked.

Aziraphale glanced from the demon to the picnic basket sitting between them. It looked like he wanted to ask Crowley why he couldn’t just lay out the food himself, but relented and settled for eyeing his husband in disapproval as he flipped open the basket. His hand stopped in mid air, hovering over the opening. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began, hand still cautiously held up. “Why is there a devil’s trap in the picnic basket?”

The demon pushed his sunglasses farther up his nose, hiding his expression with a casual shrug. “Ooh, that. Yeah, I just thought I’d whip up a few extra protections.”

“That’s very sensible of you,” Aziraphale started, clearly trying to find the best way to express his misgivings. “But was warding the picnic basket truly necessary?” 

Crowley looked away, shoulders hunched in defense. “You never know these days, angel. Got to be prepared.”

Aziraphale still looked dubious. 

“Look at it this way,” the demon sighed, liberating the plate of tea sandwiches as soon as his husband extracted them from the booby trapped basket. “Now you can keep all the petit fors to yourself.”

The angel didn’t look convinced by Crowley’s line of reasoning, but he also didn’t argue back, so the demon counted it as a win for him. They ate in companionable silence. 

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Aziraphale managed to blunder into more and more of Crowley’s protections. The demon had been forced to extricate the angel from the cleverly disguised sinkhole just outside the front gate, caution him against activating the summoning circle in the safe,[4] free him from the dread sigil concealed in the climbing rose trellis, and on one particularly testy evening, explain why exactly the sedate sculpture of a black swan in the back garden had come alive and tried to eat Aziraphale’s coat. 

In hindsight, Crowley really should have factored Aziraphale into his planned warding, but the demon had been on a roll and all of his defence strategies had seemed like good ideas at the time. Coincidentally, he’d also been quite drunk. 

Everything came to a head one day in mid-February. Crowley had been enjoying a nice nap on the sofa when it happened. He awoke to the sound of his phone ringing incessantly and to the absence of Aziraphale’s presence. All the demon could do for a moment was sit and stare unblinking into the middle distance, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. His probing occult senses shifted through the energy of the cottage before he pinpointed the issue. One of his protections had been activated, its lingering energy thrumming out from the white noise of the rest of the house. He could feel Aziraphale contained within it, like the angel’s presence had been cloaked by the sigil. 

“Angel?” he called out to the empty cottage. 

No one answered. Next to him, the phone continued to ring. 

The demon ignored it, bounding to his feet and striding through the kitchen. “Angel?” The ingredients Aziraphale had set out for dinner still sat on the counter,[5] but the angel was nowhere to be seen. 

Crowley tore out the backyard, looking through the few sigils he still had active. No one answered his increasingly frantic calls.

The phone in his pocket continued to ring. Standing in front of the cottage, completely flummoxed by the sudden and nearly complete absence of one angel, Crowley couldn’t stop his reflexes from reaching down to answer the phone. 

“What?!” Crowley hollered when he finally picked up. “I’m a little busy here, trying to find-”

“Crowley,” the voice of his angel spoke low and dangerous on the other side. 

“Aziraphale!” the demon beamed. “It’s you!” 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale snapped through the line. “Would you please tell me why I am in an abandoned flat?”

This was an odd question. Crowley had to stop and think for a moment before he could remember what sigils he had up that could possibly translate into dingy and mysterious flats. “I was trying to find you! What are you doing hanging about abandoned flats?”

“I was hoping you could enlighten me!” it was clear that Aziraphale was having trouble keeping his temper in check. “One minute I was working in the library and the next I’m standing in an appalling dingy kitchen somewhere I don’t recognize.”

“Ah. Right. That,” Crowley replied between puffs of breath as he bounded up the stairs, suddenly aware of _ exactly _what had happened. The outline of a transport sigil still glowed faintly on the door to the library. “It looks like you activated one of my transport sigils. What did you go and do that for?”

“I assure you, dear boy, I had no intention of activating it and certainly no knowledge of its existence,” the icy reply carried perfectly, even through the tinny speakers of Crowley’s phone. 

The demon ran his hand over the fading sigil, trying to remember where drunk him had linked that one to. “What colour is the kitchen?”

“Pardon?”

“The kitchen,” Crowley clarified needlessly. “What colour is it?”

“I fail to see how this will help my situation in the least. Or is this for your amusement?”

“Just answer the question, angel.” 

“Fine,” there was a pause and the sound of receding footsteps before a muffled voice hollered back “red!” 

“Red, red,” Crowley smiled, remembering his tagging system. “That would be the Cotswolds then.” 

“I beg your pardon,” Aziraphale’s voice was back on the other end, indignant and slightly out of breath. “What do you mean the Cotswolds?”

“You’re in one of my safe houses in the Cotswolds,” Crowley told him. “Now stand back, I’m coming through.” 

Without bothering to hang up, Crowley activated the sigil and allowed himself to follow it’s familiar path. He blinked out of existence. 

And blinked back in a moment later in the center of a dusty sitting room. Aziraphale looked at him for a minute, expression lost, before setting down the phone. 

“Really, my dear? The Cotswolds?”

“Eh, I won some property off of a drunk sod during the Industrial Revolution. Had to do _ something _with it,” Crowley shrugged his husband’s temper off with the practiced ease of millenia. “Now let’s get you home. I’m fairly certain I left a return sigil in one of the bedrooms.”

“Fairly certain?” 

“Buggered if I know, I was really drunk when I did this,” Crowley answered, already throwing open the door to the first bedroom. “But it seems like a thing I would do.”

It was, predictably, the last bedroom in the flat that held the sigil Crowley had been looking for. The demon glared at it for a moment as the poorly constructed lines sputtered into existence, protesting all the way. The angel and demon crashed through the transport sigil together, landing in a heap on the sitting room floor of their cottage. Crowley was the first to regain his feet, offering a hand to his husband. Aziraphale stared at it for a split second longer than necessary before pushing himself upright without assistance. 

“Now,” Aziraphale harrumphed as he dusted off his coat. “You are going to sit down and tell me exactly what you’ve down to our cottage.” 

“Fine,” the demon agreed sullenly, allowing himself to be pulled over to their sofa. 

“And then you will fix it.”

“But why? Everything I’ve done has been to protect our home.”

“This is at least the fourth time that your ‘protections’ have trapped, nearly maimed, or relocated my being. Even for you, Crowley, this is highly irregular.”

The demon, for once, held his tongue. He knew a losing battle when he saw one and this battle was most definitely already lost. With an exaggerated sigh, Crowley gave in. 

* * *

Undoing, fixing, and repairing the damage of the various wards, sigils, and protections around the cottage took Crowley the better part of the week. Aziraphale had left him to it without so much as a token farewell, storming off to London in a righteous fit of annoyance. 

Crowley managed to stick it out two days before following. He’d tried calling ahead, but all of his calls had gone unanswered. Not even standing outside of A.Z. Fell and Co., lightly knocking on the doors got him a response. 

“Have it your way,” Crowley murmured, reaching for the door handle. “It’s not like a lock is going to stop me.” 

A sharp shock rocketed through his hand and up his wrist, before he snatched the limb back like he’d been burned. Sucking on sore fingertips, Crowley crouched down to examine the door. A low level of holiness radiated from the latch and lock. Of course Aziraphale had gone and bloody _blessed _it, Crowley thought bitterly to himself. 

“Oh, come on, angel!” he jiggled the handle experimentally, cursing lowly at the faint burn in his hand. 

He could hear Aziraphale bustling around inside, but no one answered him and the door remained locked. 

“Fine! Fine!” Crowley hissed, throwing his hands up in a dramatic tizzy. “I’ll just go cause general chaos and mayhem then, shall I? And it’s all on your stubborn head!” 

The demon whirled around in a tight circle, ignoring the nosy stares of passersby as he shoved his way through to the Bentley. His car purred soothingly at him as he cranked the ignition. Music immediately blasted from the modified speakers, the volume adjusting to near deafening levels without Crowley having to Will it. Ah shit, he loved his car. 

“You’d never be mad at me,” he murmured lowly, stroking the dashboard in time to the pumping bass.

Without a backward glance, the car leapt out into traffic, streaking from the West End to central London like a demon on a mission. The Prime Minister elections were just getting underway and if the demon hurried, he should get in with just enough time to cause some minor inconveniences. Freddie Mercury’s smooth voice guided his way: 

_ One man, one goal _

_ Ha, one mission _

_ One heart, one soul _

_ Just one sore loser _

_ One flash of light _

_ Yeah, one god, one vision _

There was a voice message waiting for him when Crowley finished his reign of petulant chaos two days - and several ruined candidates - later. Aziraphale’s soft voice filtered through the speaker, “Crowley, are you there? Crowley? Oh, confound it all! I absolutely abhor these inventions.”

There was a brief pause before the message picked up again, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m taking the train home, no need to pick me up. There’ll be leftovers in the fridge for you whenever you’re done with whatever mayhem you have up your sleeve. Toodle pip.” 

Crowley rolled his eyes at the archaic angel, face pulled into an exaggerated impression of Aziraphale’s expression. But it was as close to an apology as he was getting, so he turned the Bentley for home. London could cause enough chaos without him. 

* * *

It was a sunny day on the very border between winter and spring when Hell came for them. Hastus was the first to burst up from the earth, aiming for Crowley’s crocuses with all the spite that had made him a Duke of Hell. Behind him, Crocell and his emissary Velec appeared in tandem. The emissary immediately shrank down into the form of a mountain hare and hopped as close to the blackthorn hedges as the wards would allow, marking the spot. 

“Well?” Hastur asked his fellow duke, watching as the demon surveyed the surroundings. “You promised Lord Beelzebub a legion of the damned.” 

“And I will deliver,” Crocell promised off-handedly, attention absorbed in carefully considering the wards wrapped around the cottage. 

All was silent for a long moment, well, as silent as it could be so close to the sea. It’s more accurate to say that no one spoke, allowing the noises of nature to fill the space. After a long stretch of silent watching, Velec began tittering nervously, hopping back and forth in front of the blackthorn hedges. 

“He’s going to feel our presence if we don’t move quickly,” the emissary squeaked out. 

A long suffering sigh escaped Crocell as he swept his long, fur cloak back with one arm. His fingers traced a complex sigil in midair and held the sparking construct contained, writhing and spitting in it’s evil fury before letting it expand outward. Immediately, spirits formed around them, a struggling mass of pain and suffering that folded in on itself like an escher print until each tortured soul blended into the others, edges no longer discernible. 

“One legion of the damned, as promised,” the Duke of Hell smirked at Hastur. 

“Get on with it then,” the other demon spat, barely containing his contempt for Crocell’s theatrics. 

Though he looked insulted by the tone, Crocell nonetheless complied and held both arms out, fingers splayed against the force of goodwill in front of him. The swirling mass of tormented souls surged forward as one. They clashed into the wards, stopping in mid-air as the spirits churned against the invisible barrier. Crocell leaned into the intervention, grunting with the effort of willing his troops onwards. 

Hastur yawned lazily behind him, one foot tapping against the chalk impatiently. “We don’t have all day.” 

At that moment, a shout from the cottage rang out over the transparent scream of the mass of souls. 

“He knows we’re here!” Velec shrieked in a voice warped between the delicate mezzo soprano of a young woman and the chitter of a hare. Her form rapidly lengthened upwards until she stood at the edge of the barrier, a dark knife in one hand and a cursed rabbit’s foot in the other. 

“I’ll leave you to it,” Hastur turned from them and disappeared with a whimper of inrushing air.   
With a deafening _ crack! _ and a flash of white-blue light, the outer wards exploded, cutting a sizable gap in the blackthorn bushes. Leaving all caution to the wind, the demons of hell charged forward as one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Given that Azirphale’s flannel pyjamas, gentle beige dressing down, and matching nightcap had come out of a 1953 catalogue, the observer wouldn’t have been entirely incorrect in this view.[return to text]  
2Which at that time of the morning had been the small dog from down the street, a landscape painter of questionable sanity, Mrs. John Wiggins over on Cherry St. who struggled with insomnia, and two supernatural beings. [return to text]  
3Quite literally in this case.[return to text]  
4Which would conjure up some Hellfire that Crowley had the foresight to bottle and store in one of the many caches he maintained around the country.[return to text]  
5Now a quintessential country butcher block once again. [return to text]


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late post (again), just lots of stuff going on in my life right now. I am considering adding a bonus fluff chapter to the end that was a discarded section from the second chapter featuring a New Years party with the Them. Let me know if you're interested and I'll fix it up and slap it on the end.

It was a nice day for the time of year, almost too nice. Crowley could barely believe it as he stepped into town. But he wasn’t one to question warm weather. The demon stood in the perennial section of the local nursery, trying to decide if he wanted to plant anemones, begonias, or lillies as his primary summer bloom. He’d need to get them in the ground as soon as he could if he wanted a healthy display by summer. 

Something in the atmosphere shifted, growing cold. Crowley stiffened, not taking his eyes off of the bulbs he had been staring at. Something was very, very wrong. 

“Crowley, Crowley, Crowley,” a voice croaked to him. 

A wave of ice spread down Crowley’s spine, his metaphorical hackles rising against the wave of sullen menace emanating from a patch of daffodils to his right. The demon continued to stare forward, hand locking around the sage mace he kept in his pocket. 

“Duke Hastur,” he spat, not bothering to turn around and face the other demon. “Wondered when I would be seeing you again. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but we both know I’d be lying.” 

A spastic laugh answered him and time seemed to slow to a molasses crawl. Crowley wasn’t entirely sure if it was his doing or the other demon’s. A frog hopped to the edge of his periphery before shooting upwards rapidly into Hastur’s corporation. 

Crowley turned slowly, giving himself a moment to screw on his confident smile. “I see they finally gave you another body. Unfortunately this one also smells like shit, or maybe it’s just your soul,” the demon spat. Crowley’s best weapon had always been his tongue and he had practically invented punching below the belt. 

Something dark and despairing flashed in Hastur’s watery eyes. For a split second, the Duke of Hell wavered in his place before an angry determination blazed across his face. The demon smiled with a perverse glee, one hand reaching out for Crowley as he stepped forward. 

“Stand back!” Crowley snapped, freeing the mace from his pocket with one remarkably steady hand. “You know I’m not above killing.”

“And we both know you haven’t got any Holy Water left,” Hastur spat back. “But I’m not here to destroy you. Not yet. I’m simply here to deliver a message.” 

“Well, let’s hear it then.”

“Message runs: there’s nowhere in the cosmos that you can run where we won’t find you, demon Crawly. Death shall hound your heels all the days of your life and in the dust you shall crawl forevermore, traitor of Hell.” 

“Lovely,” Crowley drawled. “Very dramatic. Did Beelzebub give that one to you, or did you have to drag Dante out from his eternal torment in the second department?[1] Satan knows none of you can write worth shite.” 

Hastur didn’t respond to this. Instead, a dangerous smile spread across his face, the type that could only be described as twisted and predatory. “Just one more question, Crowley, how long will it take that pretty little boyfriend of yours to burn?” 

The image of his cottage swallowed in flames assaulted all of his senses at once, driving him to his knees as the chilly knowledge dropped straight into his brain. All of the nightmares that had plagued his sleep for the last year came crashing down on him at once, miring his existence in one of promised torments. The Intent behind each carefully crafted image suddenly swallowing him in despair. Crowley cried out, focusing on the sting of his knees scraping against pavement to keep him grounded. He tried to rise, but the pressure of Hastur’s Will kept him rooted to the ground, legs already burning with pain from where the Duke of Hell’s claws sank into his calf. 

A voice whispered in his ear, so close that the rancid breath tickled the hair at his temples. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. See, we have a little pool going on Downstairs and we’d really like to know. Most of the boys seem to think he won’t even make it a few minutes, but I hope that angel of your’s is made from sterner stuff. It’s no fun when they suffocate right off. I much prefer that he lasts long enough to feel the fire ignite his skin, liquefy that nice fat, smother him in a pain so intense he will surely go mad.” Hastur loomed over him, contorted with laughter. A knife appeared in his gloved hand, wreaking of an evil beyond the comprehension of language. It rested at the back of the leg he had last injured in the church several months before, pressing in enough to draw an involuntary hiss from Crowley’s clenched lips.

“Why don’t we go watch it?” Hastur suggested in the tone of voice that one generally reserved for _ let’s get ice cream _. He drew the knife up the line of Crowley’s body, hard enough to cut a searing mark from the lesser demon’s knee to his ribs. The tip of the knife dug in between Crowley’s ribs with just enough pressure to promise a grievous wound should he even twitch without actually sinking in. “I want you to see a mere fraction of the torment Hell has in store for you as we destroy everything you hold dear about this pathetic world.”

Crowley sneered at the other demon through the pain. He barely registered the hard edge of someone else’s being wrapping around him in restraint as a hand in his hair yanked him to his feet. With his knees trying to go to jelly under him, it took a moment for the demon’s scrabbling feet to gain traction. Once he managed to make it upright, however, the ironclad grip on his hair and the knife beneath his armpit where the only things that kept him there. 

“- before they start without us,” the last part of whatever Hastur had been saying as he dragged Crowley to his feet filtered through, but he didn’t need to know what the other demon had meant to know that it couldn’t be good. Hastur propelled him forward with an encouraging stab of the knife. Biting back a growl against the pain in his upper arm and the still stifling hold on his being, Crowley stumbled along as he was practically dragged towards an indeterminate point. 

And then they were spinning. The familiar tug of relocation pulled Crowley’s body closer to Hastur’s in the same moment that time and space forced him rapidly through reality. Something in the demon’s subconscious knew exactly where they were going even as they sped through the sickening blur of the countryside too fast to make out anything. The demon tried to yell, but the sound died in the back of his throat as another crash of knowledge choked his mind. 

With an Effort that went to the center of his core, Crowley bucked off the hold on his being and banished the images to the back of his brain. If he lived through this, he could deal with the trauma later. With a surge of Will, Crowley threw himself against their destination, tugging Hastur along with him as they twirled faster and faster towards the ground. Both demons crashed into existence in the tall grass outside of Blackthorn Cottage. As Crowley scrambled away from the hold on his being, he reared back and did something he had wanted to for nearly 6000 years: he punched Hastur straight in the frog. 

The Duke of Hell, off-balance from the premature interruption of his travel, crashed to the side with the force of the blow. Before he could regain his footing, Crowley planted one sharp heel into the duke’s ankle. Hastur squealed in pain as his corporation buckled. The momentary distraction gave Crowley enough time for his desperately searching hand to close around the cool bottle miraculously back in his pocket. He brandished it at the other demon, wedding ring glinting against it in the morning light, and squeezed. 

Blisters formed all over Hastur’s body as a specially designed aerosol sage gel sprayed with terrifying precision. Great, bulbous pustules swelled from the blisters coating Hastur’s face, neck, and the arms he held up for protection. The whole visage swelled and squirmed as if alive, burning through the unholy hide of the demon with a purifying stench that seared Crowley’s airways. But the demon held on, determination overriding his pain. 

“He’s my husband, you bastard!” Crowley shrieked over Hastur’s long wails. He emptied the entire can into the other’s demon’s face before turning and running, Hastur’s shrill screams echoing through the void he left behind. 

In the distance, fire poured from the windows of the sitting room, orange tongues of flames licking at the peeling white paint of their cottage. The bedroom window upstairs had blown out, letting smoke leak through it like a weeping wound. Outside of the back garden, a swirling mass of souls spiraled up like a column of fire, barring any escape. A harsh gasp of breath stuttered in Crowley’s throat before he cut it off completely; now wasn’t the time for distractions. 

“Not again,” the demon cursed as he sprinted for the property line. “Not again.” It was almost a prayer, if he could have been accused of such a thing. 

Crowley vaulted over the flowering blackthorn bushes without hesitation, throwing himself forward in a desperate scramble when his searching occult senses couldn’t find any of the wards. The twisted souls reached out for his being, trying to draw him in, but let go as soon as they recognized one of their own. He wanted to scream, but didn’t dare give away his position anymore than he already had. When he looked back on the mad dash to the cottage, the demon still didn’t know how he managed to force down the sheer panic, but somehow he’d managed to make it to the back door. With a snap that was swallowed by the roar of the fire, Crowley stepped into an inferno for the second time in his life. 

The main living area was almost completely ravaged by flames, noxious smoke pouring into the kitchen and snarling Crowley in an eerie darkness. But the demon paid it little mind as he pushed through the burning debris of their home. He could hear a scuffle overhead and a sharp thrill of hope coursed through him. If Aziraphale could hold on just a little longer… 

Flames licked around Crowley as he scrambled through the cottage, as if trying to consume a body that had been born in it. He pushed through heavy smoke and burning floorboards. On the other side of the flickering flames he could just see the wavering outline of the umbrella stand. The demon threw himself forward, upending the stand in his haste. The contents spilled across the floor, clattering and rolling into the flames. As Aziraphale’s favorite parasol caught fire, Crowley’s searching hands found their prize. Michael’s sword lay amongst the scattered debris of the entryway and the demon seized it in both hands, ignoring how horribly it burnt in his grip. 

Without a second thought, Crowley threw himself back into the flames - stumbling over the debris littering the way - and up the stairs. Aziraphale lay unmoving in the middle of the hallway, just meters short of the transport ward on the library door. A demon Crowley vaguely recognized as Crocell stood above him, a set of chains in his hands.[2] His emissary, Velec, crouched at Aziraphale’s other side, fixing a set of manacles to the angel’s limbs. 

“Hey!” Crowley shrieked. “Leave him alone.”

The demon didn’t give either of them enough time to react as he leapt forward. It had been centuries since he had last held a sword and the weight was unfamiliar in his soft hands. Even when he had the misfortune of regularly using the weapon, Crowley had never been terribly adept at it. But he was more adept than a Duke who hadn’t been out of Hell since the time that Abraham wandered the Earth.

Some say that Lady Luck smiles on the bold, others believe that everything in life is due to a higher power, but Crowley believed in nothing more than the ability of his own two hands and the hubris of demons. In hindsight, that’s the only explanation he could come up with for the fact that he even survived a head on confrontation with a Duke of Hell. 

Crocell, fast on his feet, dodged sideways with a twirl of his cloak at the same moment that Velec swung a loose manacle around to whip Crowley upside the head. Hissing in pain, the demon stumbled to the side, but his forward momentum was enough to drive him, and the point of the blade, into the still dodging Duke of Hell. The holy sword bit into the demon’s flesh with a weighty resistance, noxious blood oozing back into the fuller. Crowley looked down in shock at where the sword disappeared into Crocell’s abdomen. With any other blade, the wound would have been easy for the duke to shake off, but the holiness practically humming from it had sealed his fate. With a startled groan, the demon staggered back into the wall and slumped over, soul extinguished.

Outside, the snarling mass of damned souls wailed high and long. Crowley didn’t need to see what was happening to imagine the way they twisted in on one another until the whole thing collapsed under its own weight and melted back into the earth. At least that was one problem he wouldn’t have to take care of. Crowley almost breathed a sigh of relief until the still-raised hackles on the back of his neck warned him it wasn’t over. He’d forgotten the other demon. With an otherworldly howl of rage, Velec loomed over Crowley, a cursed knife clutched in her hand. 

And then the floor gave way. 

Angel, demon, and demon crashed into the lower floor in a shower of debris, smoke and embers. Seizing his opportunity, Crowley shoved aside the burning plank lying over his prone form and scrambled to skinned knees. There was a ringing in the back of his head that brought back unpleasant memories of mud and trenches, but he managed to find his balance on his second try. 

“Aziraphale!” Crowley screamed. He crawled through the debris towards the unmoving lump of angel that lay atop sparking floorboards. His mind tried not to recall the first nightmare he’d ever had as the angel’s camel hair coat smoldered. 

His fingers were too clumsy to manage the complicated gesture that banishing the fire from clothes would take, but a quick _ snap _freed Aziraphale from any chains. Crowley shouldered the limp form with a strain of effort and Effort. As he carefully maneuvered the angel, Velec’s corporation came into view. Well, Crowley thought to himself with a giddy pleasure that he’d later put down to smoke inhalation, at least the cunt had broken his husband’s fall. He wasn’t entirely certain that the emissary was dead, but he didn’t have time for overkill. 

With one last burst of Will, a patch cleared to the doorways, flames beaten back like the Red Sea before Moses.[3] “You’d get a kick out of that simile,” the demon muttered to the still angel on his back. 

The cool spring air was a god-send, er blessing, er - it was damn _ fine _against the demon’s sweaty face. He could scarcely believe his luck as he dragged himself and Aziraphale to the still intact transport ward on the front walk. 

“Crowley!” a voice crowed. 

Almost dropping Aziraphale to the ground, Crowley’s bent head jerked upwards to see Hastur stalking towards the front gate. The Duke of Hell’s normally nightmarish corporation looked almost melted in places, dark muscles exposed across his jaw and oozing sores covering the little skin that remained on his forearms. 

“Oh, not now!” Crowley groaned, sagging slightly under the weight of his husband. 

Hastur pulled himself through the front gate with a barely repressed squeal. Behind them, the sounds of Velec’s wailing signaled that the emissary was still very much alive and returning to consciousness. Crowley would never make it to the transport sigil in time and he couldn’t retreat. 

“Shit, shit, shit, _ shit _,” Crowley cursed. Somehow, he managed to backpedal without falling over. The demon kept going until his back collided with hot brick of the cottage, using it’s already crumbling walls to support him and Aziraphale as he dragged himself towards the bin next to the rain spout. 

Hastur limped after him. “You can’t run from me, Crowley. Know that you shall suffer tenfold over even the lowest soul in He-”

The demon’s last word cut off into a shriek as he stumbled over the iris bed and disappeared. The faint outlines of a sigil glowed blue against the hole in the garden.

“Crowley!” Hastur yelled, voice muffled. 

Crowley blinked for the first time since leaving the cottage. “Huh,” he muttered to himself, he’d forgotten to get rid of that one. 

Still dragging Aziraphale with him, the demon extricated a small glass bulb from the bin. It sloshed with a clear liquid in his hand and he gingerly carried it in front of him, imagining the whole way that his angel managed to make it to the hole in the ground with him. 

“Wanker,” Crowley bit out and let the bulb fall from his hands. The clear glass turned over and over, flashing downward before bursting on impact with the chalky earth. Hastur’s high pitched scream nearly drowned out the roar of the fire behind them as the glass shattered. 

“You!” the Duke of Hell managed one last curse before he folded in on himself and melted. Crowley watched with a sort of grim satisfaction that promised he had done what he needed to. 

Energy almost completely drained, Crowley only managed to stumble several steps from the hole in the ground before he collapsed, taking Aziraphale with him. The demon lay on the cold stones of the front walk, breathing raggedly in the cool early spring air. 

The front door of the cottage flew off of its hinges and crashed into the front walk with a loud clatter that roused Crowley from his stupor. The demon scrambled to his knees in time to see Velec, soot covered hair in a wild halo around a bloody face, a wild - almost feral - look in her eye. 

Shit, Crowley cursed to himself, he didn’t have another ace up his sleeve. In fact, the demon was fairly certain that his jacket didn’t even have sleeves anymore. His desperate hands closed around the empty can of mace habitually shoved into his pocket. Without thinking, Crowley did the only thing he could think of: he threw it. 

The can soared through the air. And missed. 

But Velec wasn’t paying attention to either the downed angel or demon. She stumbled toward the street, hand clenched around a bloody gash in her arm. The arm hung loosely by her side, completely useless and slowly turning a peculiar shade of grey. In her wake, a holy sillage floated delicately. Crowley’s best guess was that she’d been cut by Michael’s sword in the fall. 

“That’s right, go to hell!” Crowley yelled to the retreating figure of Velec as she stumbled into a pothole in the street and out of existence. 

With the immediate danger passed, the demon sank to the ground in a boneless heap next to Aziraphale’s still corporation. Behind him, the fire raged on, consuming the first story of their cottage. If Crowley listened hard enough, he would have been able to hear the screams of houseplants as they disappointed him one last time. Which is why he didn’t listen at all. 

The trouble with turning your ears off is that, to state the obvious, you can’t hear anything. And that was how the couple from down the lane managed to sneak up on Crowley without him noticing. The demon didn’t realize anyone was there until two hands seized him under his armpits and started dragging him away from Aziraphale’s body. He started listening again. 

“Come on, man,” the husband of the couple from down the lane grunted, readjusting his grip against Crowley’s struggles. “Let’s get you outta here.”

“Aziraphale,” the demon called softly. 

“Mary’s with him.” 

It didn’t occur to Crowley that these people had names worth remembering[4] so it took him a moment to realize Mary must be the wife of the couple from down the lane. Or it could just as easily have been the head injuring slowing down his thoughts. 

“Aziraphale,” he repeated. 

Mary suddenly appeared in his line of vision, leaning over him to whisper in her husband’s ear, “I don’t think the other one is breathing.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Crowley snapped as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. He tore himself from the man holding him up and scrambled back through the gate. Aziraphale was still where he had left him, but was now laying on his back. Crowley reached out for him. Arms closed around the demon’s chest just as he tugged the angel’s uncooperative body across his lap. 

“We need to get you to safety,” Mary’s voice grunted in his ear. 

Oh, by everything that was unholy, the demon growled quietly. He didn’t have time to deal with well intentioned and completely unnecessary heroics. With a small spark of Will, the hands disappeared and the couple from down the lane retreated to stand with the growing number of neighbors ogling their burning cottage. 

Aziraphale shifted minutely under the demon’s hands, his brow crinkling in pain. And, oh, thank Adam’s bloody dog, the angel was still alive. Crowley hadn’t wanted to face the possibility that he’d been lugging an empty corporation out of that fire. With a low apology, the demon just managed to drag his husband through the front gate before his legs gave out on him. He crashed back onto his rear just outside the blackthorn bushes, Aziraphale falling on top of him. 

They lay in an entwined heap on the pavement, sore, drained, and somehow still alive.

* * *

Behind them, unseen by all, a dark robed figure stood waiting. Waiting and watching. 

A great scythe was clutched in its hands. The well-worn blade spoke to an eon of use, but the edge was deceptively sharp and without burrs. The handle had been made from a type of wood that might have been beautiful once upon a time, but now was clouded and grey with age. It wasn’t ornamented or particularly ostentatious or even foreboding. In fact, it wasn’t at all what one would expect out of the spectre of Death. However, Death had spent a time incomprehensible to anyone but the most ardent of astronomers honing his craft and had quickly discovered that while convention was all well and good, when it really came down to it, he had to make the job his own. Consequently his aesthetic had changed almost overnight to that of a meticulous, if not particularly lively, accountant of souls. He only kept what had its use and only used what he needed. And he never replaced what worked simply for appearances sake. 

So he stood in patchwork robes that swallowed the light around him with his worn scythe and waited. This wasn’t how he pictured the eternity after Armageddon going at all. For one, the world hadn’t ended and the purpose for his existence hadn’t ceased. For another, he wasn’t getting paid any overtime for this extension of service. Despite this grievance, part of him felt oddly grateful that he could continue to see every corner of this universe, every marvel and atrocity that befell creation. But the part inside of him that had cultivated a careful veneer of apathy reminded him that caring was, after all, what set the world apart from him. Well, that and inevitability.[5]

So Death continued to wait until the clouds that had been gathering in the distance released their load. He raised one hand, marveling at the raindrops that pattered off of his bleached bones. And then he raised his head, soulfire ears flashing over the scene before him. 

NOT TODAY, his parting words faded into the aether. 

* * *

Rain pelted down onto Crowley, cold and fierce. He tightened his grip on Aziraphale, as if his presence alone could protect the angel from the damp. 

“Crowley?” a soft voice asked. 

The demon looked down at the angel clutched in his arms, surprised to see him already stirring. “Shh, Aziraphale, it’s okay,” he murmured. 

They lay together in a heap on their front walk, watching their new life go up in flames. Sirens in the distance promised what little help mortals could offer. Crowley seriously doubted they could do anything against a fire started by the agents of Hell. He looked up into the falling rain, soot covered brow crinkled against the patter of raindrops. If he had the energy, he would have cursed the Almighty, consequences be well and truly damned. 

“Is this one of your demonic interventions?” Aziraphale interrupted the building fire of anger within the demon. 

Crowley shook his head, shifting the angel more securely into his lap. “No. I thought it was one of yours.” 

“I’m hardly in the shape to pull off divine miracles right now.”

The angel and the demon sat back in the street as it rained, dampening the fire that raged through their cottage. 

“We can start again,” Crowley whispered. 

“Of course, dear,” Aziraphale answered. “I just wish we didn’t have to.”

No one seemed to notice the two supernatural beings huddled together in the rain. Perhaps it was better that way.

* * *

And just like that, the spell that had held the neighborhood enthralled dissipated. The remains of Blackthorn Cottage smoldered on despite the combined efforts of the local fire department, the fire department from the next village over, and a specialist team from Brighton who mostly just complained of the damp than actually did anything useful. 

All down the lane, the other cottages grew darker bit by bit, the storybook ivy clinging to the walls wilted, and the gardens lost their luster. No one seemed to notice as the gossips continued on conversing over hedges about the dreadful weather and the need to clean gutters. No one even noticed that the queer couple at the end of the lane had disappeared, taking the beauty of the lane with them. 

In another cottage over on Seagull Way, a bespectacled, elderly woman sat on her front porch, taking in the morning air. She watched the proceedings from a distance, ferociously knitting a scarf for one of her many charities and composing a mental note to the Community Council: 

_ To whom it may concern, _

_ I am writing to express my concerns over the current state of homeownership in our neighborhood. Just this morning, I have seen Blackthorn Cottage in a truly deplorable state. Why are we allowing young people into our neighborhood if they refuse to perform basic maintenance on their own properties? This simply cannot be allowed to continue. Per my last letter, I ask that this council address such matters with home owners directly to ensure the current standards of upkeep remain high and to protect the beauty of our community. _

_ Regards, _

_ Matilda Benson _

_ P.S. I know you clods are reading these. Stop ignoring me or I shall be forced to lodge my complaints in person. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Crowley still wasn’t entirely sure how Hell had ended up with Dante, but he’d learned from painful experience not to ask too many questions. [return to text]  
2They were the type of chains that one might have expected a Disney villain to possess: large, menacing, and entirely too dramatic for the situation. [return to text]  
3The sight of a parted sea had not been one that Crowley had been able to tear his eyes away from, even as he guided a group of orphaned Egyptian children through it. [return to text]  
4Aziraphale normally did that job for him.[return to text]  
5Or was it ineffability? Despite being fluent in every tongue ever known to man, the nuances of language still evaded Death. [return to text]


	4. Chapter 4

Imagine this if you would: rolling fog enveloping a bustling city, the smell of fresh rain mingling with car exhaust, the sound of wheels sloshing through puddles, and a park filled with winding paths and streams. Focus in on the park with its shroud of trees, early spring flowers hiding their blossoms from the gentle rain, and sleepy ducks floating serenely near the shore in the hopes that someone would feed them. The park was, as always, home to the clandestine and secretive as the Ukrainian cultural attache leaning casually on the railing of a bridge was deep in conversation with a British official, both arguing over whether to order separately at the ice cream cart or not. It was a perfectly ordinary day. Everything in the park was exactly how it should be, except that the bench which normally held one angel and one demon lay empty. It was such an unusual sight that the man selling ice cream couldn’t help but look for them out of the corner of his eye every time he caught a flash of black or white. 

They didn’t meet in St. James park. Despite the excellent location for careful negotiations, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale could bear to sully their favorite park with what might turn into a three way war. Instead, they agreed on the neutral ground of the London Eye. Which was how they found themselves loitering on the Queen’s Walk in the rain one Tuesday morning. 

Crowley huddled as far under the nearest tree as he could get, trying to ward off the damp with his naturally menacing nature. Aziraphale stood next to him, sheltered under a tartan umbrella. Neither spoke. 

“Have I missed anything?” a young voice interrupted their silence. 

It took a moment for Crowley to realize that the voice was speaking to them and another to look down at the source. If it wasn’t for the demanding _ woof _ of a small dog, he would have ignored the whole thing altogether. Beside him, Aziraphale let out a strangled noise of distress. 

“What are you doing here, Adam?” the angel asked, hurrying out to pull the boy into the shelter of his umbrella. He needn’t have, the Antichrist was quite dry, reality bending around him just enough to shield the boy within his own climate. 

Adam shrugged, whistling for Dog to sit. The pup dropped to his hind legs immediately, not seeming to care about the damp ground. He didn’t answer Aziraphale’s question. 

“Did you come here on you own?!” the angel demanded, not to be deterred by the boy’s silence. 

“I know how to take a train.” 

“Your poor parents must be worried sick!” 

Adam shrugged again, “they’ll forget by tomorrow. They always do. And besides, I thought I could come up to the Eye with you.” 

Aziraphale face softened into a fond expression as he reached out to rest an arm on the boy’s shoulders, “that’s an awfully nice thing to offer, but I’m afraid this is going to be a lot of boring negotiations.”

“And some creative cursing,” Crowley added, ignoring the reproachful look his husband sent him. 

“I bet I’d be wicked at negotiation,” Adam’s voice was full of youthful exuberance as he looked off into the distance, imagination no doubt conjuring up images of hostage situations and pirate parlays. 

Crowley could tell from Aziraphale’s furrowed brow that the angel was anticipating Adam’s train of thought. “I’m afraid it will be dreadfully dull,” he told the Antichrist. 

Adam pouted at the unspoken ‘no’, breaking away from Aziraphale’s gentle hold to scoop Dog up. He petted the small mutt’s lopsided ears, muttering sullenly in only the way a pre-teen could, managing to sound both menacing and petulant at the same time. Crowley would have snickered if he didn’t know from personal experience exactly how powerful the boy was. 

“Come on, Aziraphale,” Crowley spoke into the tension that hung over all three of them. “It’s not like we can stop him from doing what he wants.” 

“It’s dangerous!” the angel snapped back. 

This time Crowley did laugh. “Dangerous? We’ll probably be in a lot more danger than he will. Besides, it’s not like either side wants to cross the notorious Son of Satan.” 

“But he isn’t anymore, is he?” the angel immediately countered, voice tetchy. “I seem to recall him changing that reality.” 

Crowley sneered in answer, adding an overly expressive eye roll for good measure. It might have been a childish response, but the demon wasn’t inclined to care. 

“Do I get a say in this?” Adam interrupted. 

“No!” Aziraphale put his foot down at the same time that Crowley shrugged and said “yes”. Both the angel and demon looked sheepishly at each other and then the Antichrist. 

Adam gazed over Dog’s head, fixing the angel with dual puppy dog stares. “I promise to stay out of trouble,” there was the Power of Suggestion behind his words. 

Aziraphale braced himself against the subtle command and then gave in. “Alright, have it your way, but I do not appreciate that tone!”

The boy broke out into a grin, shuffling back over to stand beside the angel. “I promise to take care of myself,” he assured before either Crowley or Aziraphale could demand that he be careful. 

Any further discussion was cut off by the faint sound of a bugle ringing out over the Thames. No one but the three supernatural beings huddled together on the walk seemed to hear it. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale sucked in a shaky breath. “That will be Heaven.” 

Not a moment later, two figures materialized in the center of the walk with a bright light, the meager foot traffic still out and about parted heedlessly around them without taking any notice. The light faded enough for Crowley to make out the familiar form of Gabriel, his usual smile firmly in place, and Uriel’s flawless complexion as the rest of her body shimmered into physical being. They held a small briefcase between them. 

“Demon. Renegade. Brat,” Gabriel greeted Crowley, Aziraphale, and Adam in turn. 

They stood in an awkward tension, waiting for the final party to arrive. Crowley glared at his watch, the seconds ticking by torturously slow. Hell was almost always perfectly punctual and this long of a delay was a clear middle finger to his continued existence. 

Finally, three figures pushed up through the ground, dirt cascading from their corporations as they solidified into the preferred forms of Beelzebub, Dagon, and the emissary Velec. 

“Fashionably late?” questioned Dagon. 

No one rose to the bait. Though Gabriel’s smile became more strained as he held himself back. 

“Everyone here?” Aziraphale asked to break the tension. Resounding silence answered. “Right, of course, silly question. This way, please.” 

The Principality led the way to the Eye, one hand clutching tightly around his umbrella and the other latching onto Adam’s smaller hand. The Antichrist reached back to slip his fingers into Crowley’s, though the demon wasn’t sure if it was for the boy’s comfort or his own. Whatever the reason, Crowley didn’t let go and so they walked onto one of the capsules hand-in-hand. The tourists who had been waiting in line parted for them without realizing why and no one followed the group of ragtag supernatural beings, affording them a meeting place all their own. 

Gabriel took one look at the low lying bench in the center and transformed it into a long table with a lazy flick of his wrist. Not to be outdone on his own ground, Aziraphale added several plush office chairs. Beelzebub surveyed the arrangements and did nothing. They all stood around awkwardly as the capsule doors closed and it began to ascend. 

“Well?” Adam asked. 

“Fine,” Gabriel muttered as he plunked the brief he and Uriel had been carrying onto the table. The case fell open with a wave of his hand, revealing a sigil painted on the inside. Candles materialized at the points of the sigil. The Archangel produced a match from somewhere within his coat and set to work.

“Izz this going to take all day?” Beelzebub demanded impatiently.

Gabriel looked up from the candle he was in the middle of lighting. “Patience is a virtue,” he patronized. 

The emissary Velec sneered at him, “not for demons.”

But the Archangel ignored her and continued to light the candles in a precise order. As the last candle wick ignited and Gabriel shook out his match, the sigil within the case glowed a stark blue. It flared brightly for a brief moment, throwing the whole capsule in sharp relief, before the visage of The Metatron materialized in the center. 

“Good evening,” they said. 

No one returned the greeting. Crowley had to suppress the urge to correct them. Honestly, were all angels that clueless to 

“Now that everyone is here,” Beelzebub spoke with barely concealed disdain. “Let’s get this over with.”

Uriel nodded, taking the seat next to Gabriel and the Metatron. “I agree.”

An awkward silence hung over the capsule, broken only by Dog’s panting as the hellhound looked out over the slowly shrinking expanse of London. Aziraphale cleared his throat suggestively, but no one took the hint. 

“Ah,” the angel mumbled, resigning himself to take the lead once more. “Well. I suppose we should begin by outlining the reas-”

“We know why we’re here,” Dagon ground out, not looking over at the stuttering Principality. 

“Then let’s just dive right in, shall we?” Crowley suggested, voice suave and practically exuding confidence. He kicked the angel under the table for good measure when his husband took in a breath to speak. The last thing they needed was for Aziraphale to hem and haw their way out, no, this situation required a more forceful touch. “It would be in all of our best interests to agree to a cease fire.”

“Any why should we give you that, traitor?” Beelzebub drawled. 

To his credit, Crowley only barely winced at the epithet. He was a demon, after all, and he’d long since developed a thick skin. “Look,” Crowley spread his arms. “You’re down three Dukes of Hell in as many years and whose fault is that? Mine.” 

His grin turned predatory. “You’ve failed to kill me twice now and I’ve destroyed the forces you’ve sent each time. Now, we can keep playing this game, because I _ really _love a good game of cat and mouse. Really, I do,” he paused to gauge their reaction, but Beelzebub maintained the same stoic disinterest that they confronted everything with. 

Carefully schooling his own features, Crowley continued, “you’ll probably even win out eventually. I mean, we all have to die some time, am I right?” 

No one agreed with him. Aziraphale looked vaguely nauseous at the thought. 

“But the thing is. The thing is, I’ll go down fighting. You know I will. And I’ll take as many demons or angels or funny little exorcist humans down with me as I can. ’s your call how much you want to throw away over the life of one angel and one demon,” Crowley finished. 

“And I’ve heard you’re having trouble with my replacements,” Crowley had seen exactly how terribly their newest one had failed when topside. The poor bitch barely lasted three months before getting herself murdered by occultists. “You’ve all been complacent for centuries, letting us do the dirty work while you lounge around downstairs. I’m sure you’ll eventually find someone suited to life on earth, but how much work will have piled up in the meantime?”

“What are you proposing then?” The Metatron asked. 

“I’m proposing that you leave us well and truly alone,” Crowley immediately answered. “No more assassination attempts or ambushes. No more counting how many miracles we use,” here he paused to look balefully at Gabriel, “or cutting us off to live like humans. Just let us be.” 

Dagon sputtered, outraged by the idea, at the same time that Uriel hissed “after everything you’ve done?!” 

Beelzebub’s eyes glinted coldly, but they turned their gaze on Gabriel instead of Crowley. The Archangel pointedly looked away, pretending to fiddle with something under the table. For a long moment, angels and demons glared at one another up and down the table, trying to communicate without having to speak. 

Adam, who had been sitting quietly by the glass wall of the capsule, spoke for the first time since the negotiations had started. “You haven’t even heard what they’re offering yet.” The boy had spoken plainly, no hint of Suggestion or the power of Command in his voice, but the whole room ground to a halt as if he had ordered them to. 

Something above Beelzebub’s eyebrow twitched as they considered Adam for a long moment. Finally, and without bothering to look at the angelic party still muttering furiously amongst themselves, they asked, “and what are you offering in return for our cooperation in your continued existence?”

“In return,” Crowley mumbled, hoping that the plan he and Aziraphale had cobbled together would actually work. “We’ll agree to take on contract jobs for you, leave your operatives alone, and you don’t have to pay us.”

“And why should we trust you to work for us, traitor?” Dagon spat the last word with all the venom a demon could muster, which is to say, a lot. Dog growled lowly under the table, the last vestiges of its infernal spirit recognizing that tone. 

“I’m a demon and I’ve been reliably informed that demons aren’t to be trusted,” Crowley couldn’t help the sarcasm that crept into his voice. No one looked impressed and Aziraphale gazed disapprovingly out of the corner of his eyes, so the demon added, “We’re prepared to sign for this. Think about it, your best Earth operatives carrying out necessary jobs for you - our choice of jobs of course - and you don’t even have to pay us.”

“You’d do these jobs to the best of your abilities?” Uriel asked, sounding doubtful. 

“And the worst of your abilities?” Beelzebub added, blank stare fixed directly on Crowley. 

Both the angel and the demon nodded. 

“We would demand concessions, of course,” Gabriel cut in. 

Aziraphale, not managing to suppress a humorless snort, muttered “Oh, of course.” 

Everyone ignored him and Gabriel pressed on. “You’d still be expected to complete the requisite paperwork and reports for each assignment. No shirking any duties associated with the contracted jobs.”

“And we’d expect you to accept a minimum number of jobs per annum,” Dagon cut in over Gabriel, not waiting for the Archangel to finish with his list. 

“Yes, thank you,” this time Gabriel’s affable smile was definitely forced. “Along with compliance for any and all decennial audits of your records.”

“Could you supply us with an itemized list?” Aziraphale asked, a wary note pitching his voice lower. “That would keep us all on the same page, if you’ll allow the saying, as we review any demands or addendums.”

With a put-upon sigh, Gabriel produced a legal pad from the depths of his coat. All along the table, identical pads of paper appeared in front of angels and demons alike. Adam had to clear his throat suggestively before one materialized in front of him as well and he set about sketching a rude caricature of the Archangel. 

It took them the vast majority of the mid-morning and early afternoon to review and approve the terms of the contract. At long last, and only with the Suggestive encouragement of Adam, the motley group had cobbled together a much scratched-out and edited first draft. Gabriel surveyed it with a critical eye before passing it down the table. 

“Are we done yet?” Adam whined, watching the sun edge towards the horizon as they passed above London yet again. 

“Hush,” Aziraphale said gently, miracling a small snack for him and Dog. “I did warn you that this would be dreadfully boring.”

“We need time to consider,” The Metatron offered, sounding annoyed that they should have to explain matters as simple as negotiation to a being meant to rule an entire world. Silence fell over the room for a long while after that, Adam stomping over to a corner to draw some more. 

Not wanting to watch the silent conversations going on as angels and demons looked scathingly at each other, Crowley let his eyes roam over the familiar skyline of London. He’d watch this place grow from a few huts on a river into a thriving metropolis. He’d seen it sacked, burnt to embers, and riddled with sickness. He’d watched it rebuild, forever growing like a living, breathing being as it expanded and changed with the times. In a way, the demon felt almost intimately connected with a city whose drive to carry on even through hardship was like a giant middle finger to the universe. It would be a shame to lose it now. 

“Very well,” the Metatron’s sonorous voice broke the heavy silence after what subjectively felt like hours but was objectively one rotation of the Eye. “We accept your terms.” 

“As do we,” Dagon responded. 

Gabriel produced a clean parchment from midair at the same time that a greasy vellum sheet appeared before Beelzebub. Neither looked at the other as they pushed the contracts forward as one. 

“No!” Aziraphale snapped. “We all sign the same contract. Wouldn’t want to leave any loopholes for one side to go after the other, would we?” 

Crowley tried to suppress the goofy grin that split his face in two. His innocent, trusting angel was getting good at these things. He could have kissed him in that moment, but the murmurs of disdainful agreement stopped him. 

Both Gabriel and Beelzebub looked at each other for a long moment before nodding in silent agreement. A snap of their fingers was all it took to combine both contracts. 

After nearly an hour, the capsule going around the Eye another two times, of reviewing all the fine print, Crowley and Aziraphale signed on the dotted line.

Dog _ woofed _once in joy, tail wagging furiously. 

* * *

"Come on, angel."

Crowley stood outside the open door of A.Z. Fell and Co., trying to coax Aziraphale into a rarely sunny spring morning. The angel stood stubbornly in the center of the bookstore, hands wringing the life out of his best cravat.

"We have to face it sometime."

"That's all well and good for you to say," the angel sniffed airily. "But I'm not ready!"

Crowley scowled at a passing couple that had slowed down to watch the commotion. "This isn't something we can put off."

"Well. Why don't you go then, if you're so eager to get it over with?"

The demon knew that anxiety was driving the icy bite of Azirphale's tone. He might even have been hurt if it wasn't for the thousands of years of practice he had on translating this particular angel's language. Plus, he had one last ace up his sleeve. "Book girl and her boyfriend have already arranged to meet us there and help."

Aziraphale pulled up short. "Anathema and Newton?" 

"Uh-huh. So get a wiggle on, angel." With that, the demon turned from the door and clambered into his Bentley. Crowley sat impatiently, fingers drumming on the wheel. Just when he was ready to give up on the angel ever emerging from his store, Aziraphale slipped silently into the passenger seat. 

“Not a word,” the angel mumbled, looking out the opposite window to avoid Crowley’s questioning gaze. 

“‘S’alright, angel,” Crowley offered as sped down Oxford Street. 

Neither spoke as they turned onto the M25 and, for once, the tape that read _ Vivaldi’s Four Seasons _actually played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The demon stared apprehensively at the horizon as he drove, not wanting to think about the task that lay ahead of them. In fact, he very much doubted that there was any point to this excursion The cottage was gone. It was unlikely that anything had survived, but they had to face reality at some point. 

“How would you feel about a little break from London?” Crowley asked to distract himself. “I was thinking we could rent a cottage in the Lake District for the summer. Give us time to think about where we want to go next.”

Aziraphale sighed, “Windemere is nice this time of year.” But he didn’t sound convinced. 

The silence that stretched between them wasn’t sort of companionable air that Crowley had started to take for granted. No, this silence sat heavily, like too much food on an already full stomach. Worry was not something that Crowley, as a demon, liked to give in to. But he was worried now. What were they going to do if Aziraphale didn’t snap out of this funk? They needed to be on the top of their game to deal with the everloving shit show that Heaven and Hell were likely to throw at them to test the limits of their new contract. 

But the angel continued on oblivious to this husband’s turmoil, gazing out sadly as the forest thinned out into the Downs. The village of Little Delving grew steadily closer, farmhouses coalescing into holiday lets as the sea loomed up in the distance. Crowley turned onto Marble Lane without a word and screeched to a stop. Blackthorn Cottage sat at the end of the lane, as perfect as the day Crowley moved in. The wisteria over the front door was just beginning to bloom and the flowers lining the front walk exactly how the demon had left them. 

The couple from down the lane waved jovially as the Bentley passed them by, looking for all the world like nothing more exciting than the occasional youth vandal had ever happened to a neighborhood that had played host to infernal warfare. 

“Angel?” Crowley asked. 

“I see it. And no, this wasn’t me.” 

They pulled into the drive, the Bentley bouncing gently over the familiar ruts. Everything down to the swan statue in the back garden was exactly like they had left it. Crowley climbed out of the car in a daze, not even bothering to help an equally stunned Aziraphale out of the passenger seat. 

“There you are!” Newt called to them as they tripped down the front walk. “We were worried you weren’t going to make it in time for tea.”

Crowley allowed himself to be propelled through their impeccably intact front door. Everything was exactly how he remembered it, down to the umbrellas in the hall stand and the slightly singed spot on the floorboards where he’d accidentally discharged the wrong ward. 

Anathema and Adam were waiting in the sitting room, sipping on tea and eating out of a melting carton of ice cream. And it all suddenly made sense to Crowley. A sharp intake from Aziraphale next to him told the demon that his husband had come to the same conclusion. 

“Did you do this, my dear boy?” Aziraphale asked. 

Dog barked, answering for Adam as the boy choked down the last of his bite. “The countryside remembered it well enough, all I had to do was give it a little creative nudge.” he explained around a mouthful of rocky road. 

“Everything is exactly how it should be,” the angel sounded like he hardly dared to believe this was true. 

Adam nodded. 

“Well, almost everything,” Newt called from the kitchen. “It seems all of your food has been replaced by ice cream.” 

Aziraphale sank into his favourite armchair, too overcome to do anything but accept the tea that Anathema offered him. He looked on the brink of tears and the teacup clinked against its saucers as the whole thing shook in the angel’s hands. Crowley reached over to still the cup before tea sloshed over the edge, eyeing Aziraphale carefully out of the corner of his eye. The angel took the type of deep breath one associated with the desperate gasp for air someone on the verge of drowning took when they finally emerged from the water. 

“Thank you,” Crowley murmured gently. He could count on both hands the amount of times in his 6000 years on earth that he had earnestly thanked someone. But this deserved every single ounce of gratitude the demon was capable of producing. 

If the sight of a tearful angel and a gratified demon phased any of the other occupants of the sitting room, they didn’t show it. Adam smiled, gap toothed and boyish, reminding everyone in the house that even if he was the notorious son of Satan, he was still a child. “What’s for dinner?” he asked. 

“Ice cream apparently,” Newt answered. “I think there are 39 different flavors in here.”

This silenced even Crowley’s wandering thoughts. The demon thought about how there could possibly be 39 different flavors of ice cream and quickly decided it must be America’s fault. He chuckled lowly, a warmth filling his core that had nothing to do with ice cream or Americans. 

* * *

Two figures stood atop the chalk cliffs, silhouetted against the horizon as the first light of day poked glowing tendrils above the sea. To the casual observer out for an early morning stroll, they looked like a perfectly normal couple watching the sunrise. Even an occult observer who knew what they were looking for would have missed the subtle blending of auras underneath the protective haze of a hard won home. To all but themselves, an omniscient and omnipresent observer that hadn’t spoken since the beginning of time,[1] and the human incarnate Son of Satan, the two figures were unknowable. Which, when all the evidence was laid out end-to-end, was how they had always been: an angel that was just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing and a demon with the capacity to do good, ineffable, unthinkable, and completely inevitable. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the angel asked, wings ruffling on the edge of reality in the sea breeze. 

“Hnnh,” the demon grunted, not wanting to admit that it was still too early in the morning for anything to be considered beautiful. “Suppose so.”

The angel sat on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the chalk, not at all bothered by the chance of falling. “And it gets to live on for a little while longer,” he continued. 

“Only because we were too incompetent to end it properly,” the demon corrected. 

“Not too incompetent to develop Free Will,” the angel disagreed, pulling the demon to sit beside him. He rested his head on a bony shoulder, draping one wing over the other ethereal being as a blanket. “Not too incompetent to choose each other.” 

“No,” there was a smile in the demon’s voice. 

They sat huddled together until the pink hues of sunrise blended out into the soft yellow of mid-morning. 

No one knew if the angel and demon who had chosen humanity were part of a bigger plan[2] and the One who did know wasn’t saying. But somewhere, deep down in the core of the human condition, the sense that they belonged to the world and the world to them won out over any otherworldly influence. And so the angel and the demon passed the remaining days of the rest of their lives as they had passed the days since the beginning: together.

* * *

“Are you really going to end it like that?” The Metatron, being the Voice that would have to narrate this story, asked. 

**YES ** the Presence answered. 

The Metatron gazed out over the crystal ball of universes that seemed to bend in on itself for infinities uncounted. Somewhere in the mess of ineffable possibilities, a happy ending was unfolding, and it made them uncomfortable. “Isn’t it a tad, how do I say this? Saccharine? Lachrymose? No, that’s not right. Maudlin perhaps?”

**I LIKE IT** the Presence responded. **EVEN IF THEY CHOOSE ORIGINAL SIN WITHIN THEIR HEARTS AT EVERY MOMENT OF THEIR EXISTENCE, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEIR WORLD IS WITHOUT HAPPINESS. **

“I understand that,” The Metatron spoke diplomatically. “But must I read it?”

The Presence rose from Her seat, circling around the globe of being. Inside the glass dome, a thought was rapidly unfolding into reality. **VERY WELL, I SHALL CHOOSE ANOTHER VESSEL FOR THIS STORY. **

Far below - or more accurately underneath given that no human language is capable of explaining what sits outside of every plane of existence - on an island that didn’t see much sun, an idea formed. And it went as follows: shit, not another one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1The reader is reminded that time and space are both inventions meant for the material world and not necessarily for the ethereal one.[return to text]  
2“If you say ineffable here, angel, then I really will throw myself off this cliff,” warned the demon.[return to text]
> 
> Additional Notes: Well, here we are at the end of all things (or, you know, the end of this story at least). This last installment ended up being a good bit longer than I had intended, but oh well it’s done. Thank you to everyone who had stuck with this story thus far and left kudos, comments, or bookmarks. I’ve appreciate your feedback! If you would like, please leave any prompt ideas you have in the comments and I might work on another story sometime soon. I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to the Good Omens fandom just yet (or ever, considering I’ve loved this book for a literal decade).
> 
> Please stay tuned for a bonus fluff chapter.


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